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“An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.” C.S. Lewis

Diagnosis: A vicious cancer that allows the patient to play mind tricks and make excuses for any behavior, even abhorrent behavior.

Diagnostic Warning Signs: The clinician will detect an overriding desire, on the part of the patient, to reduce stress that is caused by ideas in conflict. In many instances, the patient will not bother to consider what is right, only what causes the least amount of worry or stress.

Amanda loves Bryce? A Case Study in Justifications

Amanda was a junior at our high school and, to look at her, you wouldn’t think she had cancer—specifically the ability to justify practically anything. She caught me outside my classroom one morning, looking like she hadn’t slept in days. She was fidgety and kept stealing sideways glances down the hallway. “I need to talk to you,” she said.

Uh-Oh, I thought. That didn’t sound so good.

I knew Amanda pretty well. She was in my fifth hour Global Studies class and we spoke on occasion. I told her I’d be happy to set aside some time in my day for her. “Why don’t you stop by during your lunch period? You know where to find me.”

She nodded. And, just like that, she was soon lost in the mad rush to 3^rd hour.

To tell you the truth, I already knew Amanda wanted to talk about her boyfriend, Bryce. Two out of three conversations with her involved this guy—a pretty clueless baseball player with below average grades. The two had been dating on an off since their first year of high school, and the relationship was nothing short of a disaster. You know the type: exaggerated public affection, bickering, frequent blowups (often in the middle of the hallway or cafeteria), and numerous break-ups, followed by mushy and pathetic reconciliations. Remember high school? Remember these couples?

Earlier that year, I pointed out the pattern to Amanda only to get this in return: “Each time Bryce and I break up and get back together, our relationship ends up being stronger.” I exhaled and plucked a large paper clip from my top desk drawer. Unfolding the paperclip so it resembled a large S, I gave it to Amanda. I told her to bend the ends downward, and then back up. She did. I told her to keep bending the paperclip. “It’s getting warm,” she announced after a few, short moments. Naturally, just like her relationship with Bryce. And each bend of the paperclip, I informed her, represented a breakup. “That’s so not true,” she said. Then something predictable happened: the paper clip snapped in two. Amanda rolled her eyes, tossed the broken pieces into my waste paper basket and turned to leave. “I get it. Clever trick, Mr. Mahon. You just don’t know how it is with us.” She waved. “Anyway, gotta go. See you in class.”

She was out the door.

Sometimes they just don’t get it.

My room was situated toward the back of the campus, adjacent to the tennis courts. At lunch, I would retreat to its quiet confines and eat my sandwich and chips. Amanda burst in the door with about twenty minutes left in the lunch period. Tears dribbled down her cheeks, and it took me a minute or two just to calm her down. “Bryce is hooking up with other girls,” she finally announced, planting herself in the desk across from me. “Bastard.”

Hooking up. If you’ve worked with teenagers as long as I have, you’d realize this phrase could mean anything from holding hands to all-out sexual intercourse. I asked Amanda what she meant by hooking up. “What the hell? He’s having sex with other girls,” she barked. I took special note of other girls. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred, a couple like Amanda and Bryce are going to be sexually active. These two were no exception.

“How do you know he’s cheating on you?”

She spent the next several minutes detailing her extensive spy and reconnaissance network. After Amanda had finished chronicling the events of the past month, I had absolutely no doubt about Bryce’s infidelity. With the easy part out of the way, I now wanted to know what she was going to do about the situation. Listen, I’m a typical man. You present me with a problem and I’m going to start devising ways to attack it. John Gray, in his book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, calls this the Mr. Fix-It mentality. I’m definitely that guy. Just ask my wife. It infuriates her to no end.

“What do you mean what am I going to do?” she asked.

Apparently she wasn’t too hip to the Mr. Fix-It approach, so I just let her talk. Apparently, according to John Gray, the majority of the citizens from Venus like to talk. Martians find this annoying and prefer clarity and solutions over rambling, meandering conversation. Ultimately, I decided I wouldn’t fight it. But I did reach a point where I needed some clarification, so I asked her how many girls she thought Bryce had hooked up with. It turned out to be a handful.

“Infidelity is never a good thing,” I said inanely.

“I know.”

“This sort of thing destroys relationships.”

I don’t think I’m helping, I thought to myself.

Amanda frowned.

I switched my approach. “Aren’t you worried about STD’s?”

She considered the question. “You mean like AIDS?”

“Maybe. You do realize there are other germs and viruses far more common than HIV. You ever consider that he might have passed you hepatitis or syphilis? What about Chlamydia?” (Amanda and Bryce’s only form of protection was The Pill. She told me that he hated the feel of condoms.) “Don’t you think you ought to get tested?”

Mr. Fix-It had stepped in with a brilliant plan.

She shrugged.

“Don’t you want to know if he infected you?” I pressed.

“My friends say I should dump him.”

Apparently she wanted to shelve the STD question for the time being, and who could blame her? The momentary shift in the conversation was not totally unwelcome. Dump the cheating boyfriend? Sure. Sounded like a plan to Mr. Fix-It.

Then something odd happened. Amanda got this funny look on her face. She began telling me about a recent trip the two of them had taken to Key Largo. It was an afternoon of snorkeling and sunbathing. Amanda told me how gentle Bryce was when it was just the two of them. She then recounted the time they first met. “I love him,” she finally said.

Love him? Mr. Fix-It was now struggling to comprehend this latest turn of events. In fact, he was now becoming pretty frustr—

“And besides, the sex is so good.”

It took a moment to process what I had just heard; after all, she had said it so nonchalantly. The sex is so good. I wasn’t sure just what to say. And to be honest, I half expected Amanda to whip out a Parliament and start puffing. This seventeen-year-old kid, who’d just walked through my door a moment ago, suddenly looked thirty to me. I noticed something interesting, too. Amanda seemed fairly calm. The tears were gone and the blotchiness around the nose and eyes was fading.

“So, you love him. Okay…if you say so,” I stammered. “I think you two should reconsider your sexual activity. But you still have the STD thing hanging out there.”

“The girls he’s been cheating with,” she announced, “I’m sure they’re nice girls.”

Whoa.

Nice girls? What’s a nice girl? I’ve been trying to figure that one out since my mother tossed me out of the house and ordered me to go find one. And furthermore, could a nice girl contract an STD or were they immune to social diseases? I didn’t think they were, so that begged an additional question: What the devil did a nice girl with an STD look like? Would she have a Lindsay Lohan, kind of jaded look to her? Would her nose be rotting off her face? Would plainly visible, festering sores be oozing milky secretions?

Smiling now, Amanda popped up from her desk and straightened her blouse. “Thanks so much. I love our talks, Mahon.”

She spun around and sauntered to the door.

I tried to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything intelligent (or unintelligent, for that matter) to say. Amanda grabbed the door handle and smiled back at me. “Catch you later.”

The door slammed shut and I was left alone in my empty classroom.

With my empty thoughts.

With the faint aroma of cigarette smoke drifting through the room.

And a faint voice that kept asking: What on God’s green earth just happened here?

1. Cognitive Dissonance: A Useful Tool That Can Lead Some to Cancer

You’re twenty pounds overweight and something has got to give. You’ve watched Dracula (every version you can get your hands on) and now understand the merits of smashing all those nosy mirrors in the castle. The blue jeans you squeezed into last spring have been tossed into cryogenic freeze. A food pyramid is pinned precariously to your fridge beneath a cracked chili pepper magnet, while a poster of Jared hangs secretly in the attic over the forgotten treadmill. This weight, you promise yourself, is coming off. Or else.

Six days into the diet you come home to an empty house. As you peek into the refrigerator, you spot that last piece of Carvel ice cream cake left over from your daughter’s birthday party. God bless the founder of Carvel, you think. Chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and those little chocolate crunchies! You could kiss the guy who first whipped up this brilliant concoction. In fact, you’re getting an overwhelming feeling that you have an impending date with this piece of cake. Problem is you’ve remembered something: it’s a small matter concerning that little diet you started last week. All of a sudden you’re aware of a twinge of guilt tugging at your sleeve.

What is happening here?

You’re actually experiencing what a New York City psychologist observed back in the 1950’s. His name was Leon Festinger and he termed this rather common phenomenon Cognitive Dissonance.¹ The phrase literally means Thoughts (cognitions) that disagree (dissonance). Basically, Festinger believed that people strive for harmony (consonance) between their thoughts and actions. However if thoughts jiggle out of alignment and begin to contradict one another, this may cause internal tension, even stress. And, generally speaking, people will strive to avoid stress whenever possible.²

Since dieting is a challenge facing millions of Americans daily, the example should be a fairly easy one to grasp. Should I choose the cake or the diet? One may stay, but the other will have to go. This predicament is summed up thus: Thought #1: I’m on a diet to lose twenty pounds. Thought #2: I’m about to make this piece of ice cream cake mine. And the predictable result: unpleasantness and stress (maybe not catastrophic stress, but stress nonetheless). It doesn’t take you long to realize you can’t be on a diet and gobble down a piece of ice cream cake. The two rival camps will spot one another immediately, face off and begin saber rattling:

I’m allowed one little piece of cake. Not on this diet, kiddo. But I love sweets. So, love them next month. For now, you’re on a diet. What’s the difference if I cheat this once? Diets are like marriages. If you’re going to cheat, don’t bother to get married in the first place.

When the dust settles, you decide to eat the cake. The temptation proves to be too much. But there could be a possible solution to this stress you’re feeling. You might, as Festinger reasoned, change one of the two cognitions rendering them benign in relation to one another. With the adjustments now in place, this is what you’re left with: Thought #1: I don’t do diets. They are simply not for me. Thought #2: I’m about to make this piece of ice cream cake mine. Result: A little more peace of mind. (Provided, of course, that you are totally on board with Thought #1 and are not just fooling yourself).

This change in the first cognition results in consonance, or an agreement between the two. That’s a good thing. Of course, the reverse could also apply. In this case, you decide that eating the cake is out of the question so here’s what happens: Thought #1: I’m on a diet to lose twenty pounds. Thought #2: I’m not going near that piece of cake. Result: The two cognitions agree with one another. Consonance.

Will there be absolute peace of mind? Come on, you’ve just shunned a piece of Carvel ice cream cake for crying out loud, but at least you can sleep tonight knowing you did the logical thing. After all, if you’re going to diet, staying faithful to that diet only makes sense.

Don’t lose your train of thought because Festinger isn’t finished with us yet. He actually observed an additional factor playing in human nature. There are some people who refuse to change either of their cognitions. They’re going to eat the ice cream cake while they attempt to maintain the illusion of the diet. This presents a different kind of problem. Either these individuals walk around with stress knowing their cognitions are inconsistent with one another, or they find a new way to alleviate that stress. Not surprisingly, most will choose to eliminate stress. According to Festinger, this is accomplished by adding cognitions (I call it piling on justifications) to the original set.³ What will happen is this: the justifications will form a coalition with one of the original cognitions, thus overwhelming the opposing cognition. Let’s have a look. Thought #1: I’m on a diet to lose twenty pounds. Thought #2: I’m about to make this piece of ice cream cake mine. Result: Stress and Cognitive Dissonance. And here are the additional cognitions (justifications) brought in as allies to Cognition #2:

-I’ll just eat half a piece.

-I’ll do an extra ten minutes on the Stair Master tonight.

-I’m entitled to slip once. Everyone cheats a little.

-Maybe I only need to lose fifteen pounds instead of twenty.

-I’ll skip lunch tomorrow.

-I may be overweight, but at least I’m not fat like that guy over there.

New Result: Thought #1 is shouted down and out-voted. I now feel much better about myself, and I’m ready to eat that cake. A benign tumor has taken shape and encapsulated. There is probably little to worry about here.

2. Back to Amanda and Bryce—Cancer Takes an Ugly Turn

When we last saw Amanda, she was bouncing out of my classroom with a smile on her face. Given her predicament with Bryce and his flagrant infidelity, how was this possible? Very possible, Leon Festinger would say. Amanda was simply applying the basic tenets of Cognitive Dissonance.

Let’s step back in time with Amanda as she first learns of her boyfriend’s philandering. Her intense feelings for this boy are now being challenged by these new circumstances. The two warring factions arrive at the dinner party simultaneously; however, there’s only room for one. If something doesn’t give, there’s going to be bloodshed. And that’s precisely what was happening to Amanda. Thought #1: Bryce is my boyfriend and I love him. Thought #2: He’s cheating on me by sleeping with other girls.

I’ve been recounting this very story to my Global Studies and Honors Philosophy classes for the past several years. Each semester, the reactions are basically the same: the girls are disgusted and infuriated with Bryce, while the boys either have a mild reaction of disapproval or don’t care at all. Time and again, the girls tell me Amanda should have dumped Bryce on the spot and not looked back. How could he do this to her? Who the hell did he think he was by treating her this way? I smile and respond by saying that, if Amanda had dumped Bryce, this would have certainly taken care of Cognition #1, wouldn’t it? The two cognitions would now be consonant, and Amanda would be eliminating a large source of stress from her life. They don’t argue with me on that score. But Amanda didn’t dump Bryce and that’s really my point. She did not change Cognition #1. In fact, as far as I know, she continued to date and sleep with him. All the while, the stress brought on by his infidelity had to be building up inside of her. My guess is that the tension became unbearable, and that explains her visit to my classroom that day. I would conservatively estimate that, by the time Amanda came to see me that afternoon, two things were eating away at her insides. First, she had to know that her relationship with Bryce was a sham. She loved him (or so she claimed) but did he love her? He undoubtedly loved the sex, but his commitment to her was certainly suspect. Second, Amanda had to be thinking about the possibility of STD’s, particularly HIV. Remember, she was still having sexual intercourse with Bryce even after she knew he was sleeping around. That fact alone would cause most anyone to experience stress. Or at least it should.

At this point, I look at my class and ask them to recall Amanda’s solution to her predicament. The hands go up. She added justifications, they say. Right. Amanda piled additional cognitions so high and deep that, by the time she was finished, she felt much better about her relationship with Bryce. This piling on of justifications explains the smile on her face as she left my classroom that afternoon. Remember her justifications? She had a great time in The Keys recently. Amanda felt that Bryce was a loving boyfriend when the two of them were alone. She said she loved him, and claimed the sex with Bryce was so good. And, of course, the crowning jewel in her tiara full of justifications—he may have been sleeping around, but at least he was sleeping with nice girls.

By the time Amanda reached the end of the final justification, she had convinced herself that everything was okay. Love would conquer all, the sex was too good to pass up and Bryce’s other love interests had be disease-free. The STD angle was sheer speculation on her part, of course. I chided her by asking when she had actually tested these girls for the full spectrum of social diseases, but Amanda responded by rolling her eyes. At any rate, with all of these new cognitions working their magic, I tell my class, why wouldn’t Amanda stay with Bryce? The girls in my class don’t like to hear this, but I tell them they’re just going to have to be okay with Amanda’s decision.

I’m now ready to leave Cognitive Dissonance and move on to another topic. But my students have one more question for me. What is it, I ask? Whatever happened to Amanda and Bryce? Did they continue to date through junior year? What about senior year and beyond? God, don’t tell us she married that loser, they say. I smile. “Okay. I’ll tell you. As it turned out, Amanda dumped Bryce about three weeks later.”

They nod approvingly.

“Amanda got smart. She caught the cancer early enough and doused it with chemo. And that probably saved her a whole lot of heart ache in the end.”

3. Granddaddy Bird: Dead of Lung Cancer One Year after His Diagnosis

In some respects, the early Eighties were a tough time for me. I lost all of my grandparents by the end of my freshman year of college. I never asked why. I’m really not one to question those things. All I can say is this: if you still have grandparents, treasure them. They won’t be around forever. My maternal grandfather, Virgil H. Bird, was the second to go. I was in the sixth grade.

While lung cancer took my grandfather’s life, it was the cancer of justifications that started it all. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1913, he migrated to Florida with his parents and siblings when he was ten. His father (my mother tells me I used to call him great daddy- an ancient, towering man with wrinkled and leathery skin) actually built the house in which they lived. It was torn down in the late Seventies and the property sold. A two-story monstrosity was erected on the two-acre site. But the memory of that tiny place serves as a testament to who my grandfather was: an old-time Floridian, who hailed from a family of skilled craftsmen. Granddaddy could do most anything with his hands. He was an incredible sketch artist, painter, builder and carpenter. Granddaddy Bird built an entire addition to his house in the Sixties. The walls, roof, window frames, the works. In fact, that house still stands in North Miami to this day.

Granddaddy Bird loved to make me things. I still have the pirate treasure chest he built from scratch. He even hand-carved my initials into the wood: TEM: His Chest. Hanging in my den is the pirate map he framed on a large board. And I still cherish the periscope he constructed and presented to me on my eleventh birthday. He worked for Pan American Airways at their Miami International Airport hub. “Best damn tariff man I ever met,” said my father, a member of the National Airlines management team. Granddaddy Bird traveled quite a bit, bringing us exotic gifts: a bird Mola from Peru, a piranha pulled straight from The Amazon and mounted on a small base, a wooden troll hand carved in Norway and an assortment of dolls and toy soldiers. I can still hear his faint drawl and see his warm smile across the dining room table as I eat my Thanksgiving turkey. He loved Christmas and would arrive at our house bright and early Christmas morning to watch us kids tear open our gifts.

It was Christmas 1974. I was ten. Life was a great deal less complicated than it is today. My buddy, Adam Garfinkle, and I played endlessly with my most prized Christmas present that year: a Mego Planet of the Apes Tree house, complete with all the ape and astronaut figures. Bing Crosby crooned from the bulky Magnavox, as Granddaddy Bird eased into his chair to watch us play and carry on like banshees. I can still see my mother saddling up to him, brows wrinkled.

“I want you to see a doctor,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Do you understand me?”

He patted her arm. “I will, honey. After the holidays.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

I went back to my Planet of the Apes Tree house, assuming all would be fine.

Well, all was not fine. Granddaddy Bird had been experiencing shortness of breath for at least the past six or seven months. He had an ugly cough. It worried him. It worried my mother. The holidays came and went. We ushered in 1975 and I was now back in school. It had to be the middle of January when Granddaddy Bird came over the house with Aunt Bee (his second wife). I remember lounging on my parents’ bed watching Hee Haw on the black and white Zenith. Aunt Bee and my mother slipped into the bedroom and shut the door. I glanced up from the television. Bee inhaled, looked my mother straight in the face and said, “Toni, your father has cancer.” My mother covered her mouth and began to cry.

Up until that time, I had only seen my mother cry one other time. What a surreal feeling.

Granddaddy Bird had lung cancer. I know my story isn’t unique by any stretch of the imagination; this scene is played out daily in homes across the United States and beyond. But the reality of cancer is never quite real, I’ve found, until it hits your home and your family. Yes, my grandfather smoked. In fact, according to my mother, he started fiddling around with cigarettes when he was nine. And since he was now sixty-one, that made him a fifty-year smoker.

That’s a half-century love affair with nicotine.

Granddaddy Bird threw away his cigarettes. Aunt Bee, who also smoked, kicked the habit as well. He began seeing a specialist. He endured the rounds of chemotherapy, as well as the associated nausea. Though Granddaddy Bird never did lose his hair, he eventually needed the assistance of a cane. He had to have his gall bladder removed a few months later, but he quickly recovered from the surgery. I often sift through the old family albums, and marvel at how good he actually looks in many of the pictures taken in 1975: Father’s Day in June and my sister’s birthday in August.

One day, my father paid him a visit at the house. It wasn’t until I was in college that Dad told me what transpired that day. “I’ve never told your mother this. I don’t want to upset her.” Dad said that, at one point in their visit, Granddaddy Bird dropped to his hands and knees in the middle of the living room and began pounding his fists into the carpet. “ISN’T THERE ANY HOPE FOR ME? ANY HOPE AT ALL?”

I’ve never had the heart to tell my mother, and I pray that when she reads this she’ll understand.

We rolled through fall, finally arriving at Thanksgiving. Our family went to Granddaddy Bird’s house for dinner, but I can recall very little of that afternoon and evening. I know one thing, however: he is not present in any of the photographs taken that day. He was too sick to leave the bedroom.

Mom and Dad made an extraordinary effort to make Christmas of 1975 merry and upbeat for my sister and me. Exactly a year after Granddaddy Bird assured my mother he would see a doctor after the holidays, he sat in our living room looking gaunt, ashen and exhausted. I can still see him coughing up wads of phlegm into a paper towel. To be honest with you, I’m surprised he managed to make the twenty-minute trip to our house that morning. Somehow Aunt Bee, who was now nursing him, bathing him and wiping him after he went to the bathroom, managed to get him dressed and into the car.

I went to bed on December 29^th knowing that time was short. While my sister and I slept, my parents received an urgent call from Aunt Bee. Granddaddy Bird was cycling into his final descent. You’d better get over here fast, Bee urged. They rushed him to Palmetto General. By the time my parents arrived, there wasn’t much time. My father went back to see him, and administered a blessing using his crucifix.

And then Granddaddy Bird’s lungs gave out.

My father went back in to officially identify his body. Dad later told me what an incredibly relieved look Granddaddy Bird had on his face as he lay lifeless on the table. He would finally get some peace after a year of hell.

A Word About Smoking…If I May

Right about now, I’m struggling for something intelligent to say to my students. They’re fairly moved by the story of Granddaddy Bird. I’ve made my point. The kids are getting a glimpse of my human side, which is a good thing. They sense that I’m still bothered by my grandfather’s death despite all the water that’s gone under the bridge. I’m in my forties now, I tell them. And what irks me is this: Granddaddy died so long ago (I was eleven at the time) and he was so relatively young (sixty-two-years old) that if he were alive today, he’d be in his nineties. Not completely beyond realm of possibility. I’m not telling them something like my grandfather would be 115 years-old today. He really could be alive today. Of course, could just doesn’t cut it. Could isn’t going to get it done. JFK could be alive today if it had been raining in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

I look at my students. They look back at me. Okay, so what now? Should I begin to spit forth a litany of smoking factoids? The American Cancer Society has some eye-openers.

Nearly 440,000 Americans die each year from tobacco use. At least 1 in 5 deaths in the U.S. is related to smoking. And cigarettes kill more people than alcohol, car accidents, AIDS, homicide and illegal drugs combined.⁴

My students politely jot down the information as if to say, Fine. No problem. Anything else we should know? There are no gasps of horror. Nobody cringes. I get a few raised eyebrows when I tell them that, according to the CDC, men who smoke eliminate an average of 13.2 years off their life span, while women lose 14.5 years.⁵ I also catch their attention with this one: 75% of people who smoked each day in high school were still smoking almost a decade later, even though they had brazenly predicted, back in the day, that they would eventually quit. Then I drift off and begin to mutter to myself. “Cigarette smokers are an odd lot,” I say. “I don’t get them but, then again, maybe I just don’t get drug users in general.”

My students begin to glance at one another. Now what’s he babbling about?

Well, for one, smokers are doing something everyone knows is dangerous—real dangerous. Yet they don’t stop. It’s like handling a deadly cobra every day. You may have a license from the state to own an exotic serpent, but you run the risk of the damn thing biting you. And when you do get bit, you’re most likely done. Just look at Peter Jennings, former ABC News anchor. Dead four months after telling the world of his affliction. If you smoke, you’ll face one, perhaps even two cancers. First, you’ll have to deal with justifications. Finally, you may ultimately grapple with lung cancer. But never forget which cancer started the whole ordeal.

The High Cost of Smoking

Cigarette smokers, especially those in the lower socio-economic groups, are draining their bank accounts (as drug users will do) at alarming rates. This brings up the issue of cost. One of our teachers just informed me that he pays over $6 for a pack of cigarettes—including all the new federal excise taxes— but a pack would probably run him a cool $12 in New York City. Smokers pay more for insurance. Their cars and homes tend to lose money on resale. They pay more at the dentist. More and more employers are refusing to hire smokers; some require prospective employees to sign non-smoking affidavits. It’s funny and poignant how frequently smokers leave their work areas to get a quick fix of their drug. Whether in small groups or alone, these smokers slouch, stand or pace in alleyways, behind dumpsters, on the front steps of buildings, under trees, on sidewalks, all the while blowing their smoke and flicking their ashes into the breeze. Just calculate the loss in man-hours, the loss in production. Imagine demanding a ten-minute break to guzzle some whisky or shoot up a little heroin. Imagine the following request: Hey boss, I must leave my desk on occasion, for ten minutes, to stand outside and stare at the clouds. Then I’ll return to my work. However, I’ll start to get fidgety after an hour and I’ll need to run outside again. This will happen each and every day I ever work for you. I just wanted you to know that upfront. I know my smoking friends won’t find that amusing, but my students sure do. I continue. I see smokers dangling cigarettes out their car windows, carefully blowing their smoke into the clean air. One of my former students, I tell them, came by to see me recently. I asked her if she still lit up. She nodded her head. “But we have an agreement in our apartment. We can only smoke outside on the porch. None of us wants the smoke getting into the carpet or the drapes.” Great, I say. Save the carpet and drapes, but go ahead and pollute your lungs. “Oh, stop it,” she said, nudging me.

Many smokers, especially the hardcore addicts, walk around like tightly wound toy robots. I have two explanations for this, I tell my students. First of all, these addicts are experiencing the typical highs and lows of drug addiction. (I now notice that some of my students seem to be uncomfortable with the drug addict reference. Why? Nicotine is a highly addictive drug, I remind them. If you’re addicted to it, you’re a drug addict.) Smokers get their fix and get up on that high. Then they start to come down, forcing them to seek an additional high. Up. Down. Up. Down. Stress. Relief. Stress. Relief. And there’s no stop to it—like one of those little animals we’ve all seen on the nature channel—constantly foraging for food all day long, non-stop. There’s no break. No holiday. It’s the same cycle Sunday through Saturday. Secondly, Cognitive Dissonance has to be a constant reality to a smoker. You just knew I was going to get back to Leon Festinger’s brainchild, didn’t you? I don’t want to insult your intelligence, but here we go again: Thought #1: I smoke cigarettes. Thought #2: I know smoking is dangerous.

To eliminate Cognitive Dissonance, the smoker would have to change one of the two cognitions. Imagine a goof that would have the nerve to eliminate #2 and replace it with something like, The dangers of smoking are largely a myth. You can’t believe everything they say. Of course, changing #1 makes more sense. Still, many smokers refuse to quit, which begs one, important question: What on earth keeps them going? My parents were a prime example of a couple who lived, for years, under the cloud of Cognitive Dissonance. Mom and Dad watched Granddaddy Bird waste away to nothing, and yet they continued to smoke until 1990, finally quitting fifteen years after that awful day in 1975. My father had crippling lung disease and was on oxygen twenty-four hours a day. What took them so long to quit? Mom says the two of them finally got the will power to walk away from nicotine, but why didn’t this happen earlier? You know the answer. Justifications—that pernicious cancer that sneaks upon us.

· Today’s not a good day to quit, but I’ll quit one day.

· I’m addicted and it’s not easy to quit.

· At least I’m not an alcoholic.

· At least I’m not doing hard drugs like cocaine.

· Everyone has a vice. Smoking is mine.

· Smoking evens me out.

· Smoking helps keep the pounds off.

· Smoking helps relieve stress.

· Smoking energizes me.

· Lots of people smoke.

· Lots of good and successful people smoke.

· I’m a good person.

My favorite comes from a friend of mine, an intense guy, who was forced to quit a few years back because of artery blockage— “I ENJOYED SMOKING. DO YOU HEAR ME, TOM? I REALLY, REALLY LIKED IT.”

I often wonder which justifications my grandfather used all of those years. Granted, when he started smoking, there was no CDC, no Surgeon General, and no American Cancer Society. All the silver screen actors huffed and puffed: Gable, Bogart, and Hayworth. But that all changed significantly before his cancer diagnosis. So, why didn’t he quit? What was he waiting for? For that matter, what is anybody waiting for? Are they waiting for the chest x-ray that will reveal a spot on the lung? How about shortness of breath or coughing up blood? It is here that many throw away the cigarettes and stare into the abyss, hoping to strike a deal Kubler-Ross so eloquently describes in her writings. The cigarettes are gone and I won’t smoke again. I swear. Now, can you just go away and leave me alone?

Unfortunately, in many cases, cancer stares straight back from that abyss and answers, No deal.

A Wish

Vista Memorial Gardens is a small cemetery that lies just west of the Opalocka Airport in Miami. Granddaddy Bird has been there in repose since 1975. I’m ashamed to say this, but I don’t think any of us have been to the cemetery in years. Mom lives three hours away; I live an hour north of there. Aunt Bee relocated to Central Florida in the mid-80s and passed away just a few years ago. South of Vista Memorial, there’s a small house nestled in an old Miami neighborhood. It’s the house in which my mother grew up. And in that house, in that small living room, there is a conversation that I desperately wish had taken place in 1945—years prior to Granddaddy Bird’s lung cancer diagnosis.

“Hey, Dad. I want you to quit smoking, do you hear? I’m not kidding. Throw away the cigarettes.”

“Sure thing. After the holidays, honey.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

4. The Cheech and Chong Effect: Justifying Marijuana Use… With a Shrug and a Smile

It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Dad and I stayed up late one night watching cable. As I flicked through the channels, I felt the overwhelming impulse to stop and check out a movie that was playing on HBO. It involved the exploits of two bungling stoners called Cheech and Chong. In fact, if memory serves, we were watching Things Are Tough All Over. These two buffoons really were hilarious, and we roared for the next hour-and-a-half. I don’t want to sound too sentimental, but it was a bonding experience for Dad (a World War II B-24 tail gunner) and me (a struggling college student) over a movie whose unifying theme was…drug use, of all things. Dad and I chuckled about the movie for the next couple of days.

Then, toward the end of the week, I got a little irritated with myself. I hate drugs. I absolutely detest marijuana. I’m sorry, but I think marijuana users are knuckleheads. See, even here I have to stop myself. Knuckleheads. I’m poo-pooing the issue by using an inane euphemism like knuckleheads. What I should be saying is this: Marijuana users are breaking the law. They’re drug users and drug users belong in either rehab or in jail. And this is really my point about the pot culture in America and around the world: Many of us fall victim to the same mentality when it comes to marijuana.

Let’s start with a well-known fact that’s really a myth: pot is not a real drug. You’re an uptight idiot if you oppose its use. In fact, why don’t you just relax and get a hobby, sport? Smile. God loves you, dude. Hey, it’s all good. And finally, look around you. Everyone’s tried pot.

In the battle of Madison Avenue slogans, pot users are getting the best of those of us who vehemently oppose its illegal use. They’re winning the war of words. Worst of all, they’re winning by being completely illogical about it. I’m amazed at how similar people’s stories and excuses are when it comes to pot use. They all say the same things and use the exact same verbiage when they’re under suspicion for drug use. It’s uncanny—almost like they’re operating from a universal playbook—like some goofy life coach has huddled them all together for a pep-talk.

This One I Call Page 1 from the Pot User’s Playbook

FIRST and foremost: deny, deny, deny. This does occasionally work, especially if you’re dealing with a naïve interrogator, such as an employer, doctor, teacher or school administrator. Simply tell them you don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

IF you feel that you’re dealing with a skilled interrogator and have nowhere to hide, give ground only in small increments. Start with, “I once tried pot…I think.”

IF you are pressed for how much you smoke, tell them that you only take a drag or two, nothing more. Now this is crucial: always underestimate your pot use by at least 90%. They’re probably too dumb to realize that a “drag or two” is code for “I smoke out almost every weekend. Let that be our little secret.

WHEN being harassed for how frequently you smoke Mary Jane, simply say: “Oh, just special occasions.” If they ask for a definition of a “special occasion”, be as vague as possible. Never surrender specifics. Mention something nebulous about a friend’s birthday party, at which the whole world seemed to be smoking—including the guy’s own mother. Maybe mention an obscure holiday.

IF the unjust, fascist interrogation continues, tell them that everyone (parents, politicians, doctors, mail carriers, bloggers) smokes weed, and that they need to open up their eyes and get with the program. Of course not everyone smokes weed, but just about everyone WE know does. But they don’t have to know that.

DURING the outrageous interrogation, be sure to slouch and yawn frequently. Casually shrug as much as possible. Offer a subtle, wry smile. In this way, you’ll give your Nazi interrogator the distinct impression that marijuana use is not a big deal. Let them know, by your body language, that weed is not a “real” drug. Reefer heads are not bad, nor are they dangerous; after all, Cheech and Chong were certainly not evil or dangerous people! They’d never hurt anyone and neither would you. Point out that the weed whackers of the world would never storm a bank in a rage and shoot its occupants. Tell them that, if this person had smoked out that morning, they would have breezed into the bank and passed out hugs, not bullets.

YOU may be asked if you use other drugs like cocaine, ecstasy or heroin. Your reaction, even though you may be helping yourself to these new substances, should be one of absolute horror and shock. Exclaim, “Absolutely not! Do you really think I would be that stupid? People who use those drugs are idiots. People can overdose or die on sh_ _ like cocaine.” Of course, we’re implying, oh so subtly, that pot is not a real drug. If you’re a good enough actor, you can really drive home this point. You can also divert attention away from your cocaine or heroin use.

THE fascist dictator may ask you where you got your weed. Be very careful here; a truthful answer could wreck your supply line, as well as expose other people to unwanted scrutiny. This question must never be answered honestly. Start by saying, “Some guy gave me the pot.” If pressed for a specific name, give only first names. Say, “His name is Ricky. I don’t know his last name.” Remember that this Ricky does not live in your neighborhood. He does not attend your school. He does not work in the company. He’s not a friend, nor is he a relative. Like Deepthroat, Ricky is that shadowy figure lurking in the darkened parking garage. He’s a mystery man and nobody knows his true identity. Of course, we know that Ricky is someone you know very well, but they don’t have to know that.

IF asked when you’re going to stop using pot, tell them you’re not a user. Remind this fool that you only smoke on special occasions and don’t need the stuff. Feed them that line of bull from the 1980s that marijuana isn’t physically addictive. Pray they don’t cite the recent report showing more teens in drug rehab, for pot smoking, than for all other drugs combined. That would not be cool. Tell them, “Sure I tried it, but who doesn’t?” If it’s a school administrator asking the questions, imply very strongly that 80% of his teaching staff has tried marijuana at one time or another. If you’re real bold, suggest that he/she has tried pot. Let them chew on that one for a minute.

WHENEVER you get the chance, always extol the virtues of hemp. Tell them how wonderful hemp works with clothing products. Remind them that weed can help treat many ailments: AIDS, nausea from chemotherapy and glaucoma deficiency. Cite the recent study that claims marijuana use may help prevent Alzheimer’s. Offer to bring this nit-wit a copy of High Times so he can read it for himself.

Reaction to the Playbook

When I give the playbook to my students I watch them carefully. Two years ago, I got rave reviews from my 5^th hour class. You would have thought this was material worthy of Jay Leno. Several of them giggled and stole knowing glances at one another. “This is great!” they said, slapping their knees. “This is so true!” I know that, I tell them. I’m not logging my twenty-sixth year in high school for nothing. I also know that the kids who giggle could, very well, be the one’s using pot. I certainly hope not, but they might be.

Last year, the playbook bombed with my 4^th hour. Their faces said it all: This is interesting but nothing that relates directly to us. They clipped the handout into their notebooks and calmly waited for the next topic. There were probably no pot users in that class. I was a little bummed out by the lack of feedback, but I was happy to be teaching a class full of lucid individuals.

The Cancer of Justifications

Let’s consider what Cognitive Dissonance might say about the issue of marijuana use. Thought #1: I smoke marijuana. Thought #2: I know marijuana is bad for me. So, in order to maintain these two cognitions at their current levels, the user would have to pile on justifications. And just what are those justifications when it comes to pot use? Well, you’re already read the Pot Users Playbook. It’s full of them. All too often, I’m afraid to say, the issue usually plays out in the following manner: Thought #1: I smoke pot. Thought #2: Pot is not a real drug. There’s little danger to it.

And so we have millions of people in America walking around convinced the preceding cognitions are perfectly consonant, in relation to one another, and thus fine. One student asked me if I had ever used marijuana. “No,” I responded. “Drugs have never interested me. I watched my grandfather die of lung cancer. My parents smoked and I’ve always been repulsed by any kind of cigarette. It’s not that I’m an extremely moral person with extraordinary self-control,” I told her. “I’m a common sinner like everyone else. I’m just no more interested in using drugs than I am climbing Mt. Everest. I guess I’m just lucky on that score. But not to worry. I have plenty of other vices.”

I’m not sure all of my students believe me when I say this, but I’m okay with that.

This student then asked me why I’ve never used marijuana. She wanted to know what my justifications were for staying clean. I had to admit, it was a very good question. I paused and began to tick them off. As I stated earlier, my parents cured me of the smoking thing. I had asthma as a kid and teenager, so that might have something to do with it. Since I’ve always been athletic, I see marijuana as extremely counterproductive in this endeavor. I don’t want to turn into an apathetic goofball. I don’t want all that crap in my system for my liver to filter out. I don’t want lung cancer. Finally, believe it or not, I’m afraid I would like it too much.

This last justification always gets raised eyebrows from my students. What do you mean? I tell them that, by and large, I’m a laid-back person. I like smooth and calm seas. And I’m absolutely convinced that my drug of choice would be alcohol, marijuana or most other types of depressants. That scares me a little. I’m not kidding. I also share with them an article written by Joe Kollin, a reporter for the Sun-Sentinel. It appeared in the local section on September 10, 2005 and it deals with Marijuana Court that we now have in Broward County, Florida.

…The court is focusing on marijuana, once considered a recreational drug, because it isn’t any more, according to Doug Hughes, executive director of the safety council and Florida’s former drug czar. “Marijuana today isn’t the marijuana our parents knew,” he said. It is so strong and addictive that Broward hospital emergency rooms now routinely treat pot overdoses…

I have a few additional items to share with my students. First, there is now ample evidence to show that marijuana use increases the risk of psychosis, especially in the vulnerable and developing brains of adolescents. (WebMD, December 1, 2004). Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll—we now know that teens who use drugs will have a much higher chance of engaging in sexual activity. (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 2004). A 1994 report shows that teens who smoke pot are 17 times more likely to use cocaine as adults. (David H. Farb, Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Boston University School of Medicine. Contributing author to It’s Only Pot. Reader’s Digest. January, 1997). Furthermore, today’s pot contains 10 to 20 times more THC than its 60s and early 70s counterpart. Pot has over 400 other chemicals whose effects are still largely unknown. (David H. Farb, Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Boston University School of Medicine. Contributing author to It’s Only Pot. Reader’s Digest. January, 1997). Pot creates more of a need for oxygen in the human body, yet decreases the supply. And marijuana can drive up a person’s pulse to over 100 beats per minute. (David H. Farb, Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Boston University School of Medicine. Contributing author to It’s Only Pot. Reader’s Digest. January, 1997).

Parental Attitudes and the Cancer of Justifications

A counterpart of mine, from another high school, told me he recently got on the phone with one mother a while back, and told her that he suspected some pretty substantial drug use with her son. Her response was one of utter shock. “You mean drugs other than pot?” Grab a legal pad, he told me, and pull up a chair. Consider her question—…drugs other than pot? How long would it take you to convict her in the Court of Lousy Parenting, an hour? My friend said, “Give me thirty minutes and I’ll have my case ready for the jury.”

In a day and age when parents really need to be looking out for the safety of their children, they should be encouraging their kids to avoid trouble with the law. Parents should be there to provide solid, authoritative parenting, so consider all of the possible meanings of “You mean drugs other than pot?”

· I can’t believe they’re still making such a big deal about weed after all these years.

· I used pot when I was young and I turned out okay.

· As an adult, I still smoke on occasion.

· My kids could be doing a lot worse like robbing banks.

· At least they’re not doing cocaine or heroin.

· I don’t let my kids smoke and drive.

· I tell them it’s okay, just don’t do something stupid like get caught.

· My children and I have an open and honest relationship. At least I know what they’re doing—unlike some parents I know.

· I make sure my kids are using in a safe manner.

· You can’t stop them; they’re going to do what they want anyway.

And there they are— many of the cancerous justifications some parents use to soften the reality of what they’re doing, which is allowing their children to use illegal and dangerous drugs. Here’s another point. We may all be created equally, but we’re sure as hell not raised equally. Some kids are truly handicapped by their parents—parents who make the illogical and misguided assumption that teenage behavior cannot be controlled. Along similar lines, some have absolutely no clue as to how to go about controlling their kids. Others simply cannot be bothered.

I was speaking to a neighbor of mine, who was stunned by the news of her twenty-one-year-old son’s drug test results. He was trying to get a job somewhere or the other, and had tested positive for pot and cocaine. How was this possible, she wanted to know? Her son couldn’t be a regular cocaine user. I tried to keep a straight face. This parent had a reputation for turning a blind eye to her kids’ pot use back when they were in the public school system. I should have called her on this point, but I let it go. So I found another way to get my point across. “Do you know where he gets his marijuana?” I asked. She did not but she assumed it was clean. “How do you know? Did either you or your son watch the person who rolled the joints?” No. “Do you even know where the rolling paper came from?” She did not. “Then don’t you think it’s possible someone could be slipping cocaine into his joints?” She considered the possibility and reluctantly agreed with me. “Maybe there will be heroin in his next cigarette,” I told her. ”In fact, I read where one guy smoked pot laced with embalming fluid.” At this point, I can almost hear what she’s thinking: Dammit, I knew I couldn’t trust him to smoke. I give the okay and he goes ahead and tests positive for cocaine.

5. Cancer Visits Wall Street and the Boardroom

My parents were enthusiastic coffee drinkers all the years I was growing up. I can still see Dad’s old coffee mug resting on the kitchen counter next to the range. The caption on it read I Can Resist Anything but Temptation. When I reflect on that stained mug, I recall some of the modern day financial scandals we’ve been forced to swallow and digest as a nation. Corporate corruption surrounds us, it seems. Of course, for every jackass with his or her hand in the till, there are scores of others doing the right thing. Unfortunately, today’s headlines seem to be reserved exclusively for the crooks, cons and scam artists of our times. Unfortunately, I’m about to contribute to that trend. I have a rather lengthy Power Point presentation dealing with business ethics that I use with my lectures. In it, I discuss several disturbing business scams with which I’m sure you’re familiar.

Item- A ring of body tissue thieves hits local funeral homes and cons the mortuary workers into giving them access to bodies. In many cases, the criminals steal bones and replace them with PVC piping. Item- Former Enron executives Skilling, Causey, and Fastow are serving jail time for fraud and corruption that led to the energy-trading giant’s collapse. CEO Kenneth Lay died before learning of his sentence. Somehow, this group of enterprising men (The Smartest Guys in the Room, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind call them) managed to hide $500 million in debt from stockholders. Shares of Enron stock plummeted from $80 to under $1. Item- WorldCom’s Scott Sullivan and Bernard Ebbers have been tossed in jail for hiding $4 billion from investors in the country’s largest bankruptcy. Stock dropped from $60 to $16 to just 5 cents. Sullivan had to surrender a 30,000 square foot mansion in Boca Raton that he had been constructing with company cash. Item- Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski lavishly spent company money like a drunken sailor: $56 million in bonuses for himself, $11 million to furnish his Manhattan apartment, $17,100 for a traveling toilette box, $15,000 for a dog umbrella stand, $6,300 for a sewing basket, $6,000 for a shower curtain, $5,960 for two sets of sheets, $2,900 for coat hangers and $2,200 for a metal wastebasket. Item- A Kentucky couple bilks aspiring authors out of $1.5 million and then skips town. None of the authors got their books published and the two scammers, with only high school diplomas between them, serve time in federal prison. Their scam: upfront money from authors to publish their novels. Item- Florida pharmacy giant Eckerd Drugs (now CVS) estimated, one year, that employees had stolen $5 million in merchandise right off the store shelves. The company was forced to pass the losses off to consumers by raising prices. Item- Monsignor John A. Skehan and Reverend Francis B. Guinan, two Delray Beach, Florida priests, were accused of misappropriating $8.6 million dollars of parish funds. The money was used to purchase real estate in Florida and Ireland. The rest of the cash went toward gambling trips to Las Vegas and The Bahamas, a rare coin collection, as well as the support of a couple of girlfriends.

Imagine the Cognitive Dissonance associated with Enron and WorldCom scandals. Thought #1: Stealing is wrong. Thought #2: I’m in a position of public trust, yet I’m stealing millions from hard working Americans. Result: I feel absolutely fine about myself. How about you?

Feel fine? How on earth would this be possible? Well, consider that the majority of these financial giants pled not guilty to their charges. Only a handful copped pleas and rolled over on their superiors. This resulted in several high-profile trials that cost the public millions. Of course, prosecutors succeeded in securing convictions against all of these meatheads. Meanwhile, thousands lost their retirements and have been left in financial ruin. But this scandal leaves us with a very disturbing question: Is it possible for the ring leaders of the Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia and Tyco scandals to steal and defraud in such a prolific manner, yet feel absolutely no empathy for others? Absolutely, many in the business world say. It’s called Narcissism and sociopathy— terms I’ll explore a bit later on.

I Look out for #1. That’s Justification Enough for me

For now, however, suffice it to say that the term narcissism finds its roots in Greek Mythology. Narcissus, a handsome youth, fell in love with his own reflection in the waters of a placid pond. He sat himself down on the shore of that pond and gazed continually at his beautiful reflection. There he pined away and died, and from that spot sprang a flowering plant we now know as the narcissus. Narcissism has evolved into a full-fledged Axis II personality disorder, although it doesn’t look like it will survive the cut for the next diagnostic edition of what’s known as the DSM (it will probably be included under the general umbrella of psychopathy). Anyway, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV- TR (Text Revision) has a very thorough description of this disorder, starting on page 714. Basically, narcissists have a grandiose sense of self-importance, and are preoccupied with fantasies of incredible success, brilliance, beauty and power. They have an incredible sense of entitlement that springs from their convictions that they are special, unique, above all rules and laws, and deserving of special treatment and status. They routinely exploit situations and others in order to achieve their own personal goals. They lack empathy for others and many come across as haughty and arrogant.

In a 2002 New York Times article, Tim Race interviews Professor Jay A. Conger from the London Business School. Conger is himself an author of an article entitled “The Dark Side of Leadership.” Race quotes Conger extensively.

“It happens every decade; the proportion of these cases increases during times of market euphoria.” Conger says that the “romance of leadership” (in the business world) tends to deify these corporate executives. “This can be a liability if the leaders begin to believe they are geniuses,” citing the Enron case as a perfect example. “They begin to believe they and their organizations are one-of-a-kind, that they’re changing the face of industry. They desire entitlements beyond any other C.E.O’s.”

A perfect example, Race writes in his article, was Harvey L. Pitt—then chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under fire almost from the time of his nomination by President George W. Bush, Pitt served a tumultuous 15-month term before stepping down amid a firestorm of criticism. The tempest didn’t prevent Pitt from proposing a promotion and pay raise for himself. Said Pitt, “It is an enormous advantage to the public to have somebody who knows about the securities law as I do, and it would be unthinkable to deprive people of my expertise.”

A Sacred Trust Violated: Cancer Steps up to the Altar

I suppose, of all the corporate scams that have been perpetrated recently, the ones that disturb me the most are the Skehan/Guinan cases from the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida. Just imagine the Cognitive Dissonance. Thought #1: I’m a priest, a man in the public trust. Thought #2: I’m stealing money from my parishioners to support my sophisticated lifestyle.

I can almost see Skehan now. He’s sitting in the celebrant’s chair, at the ten o’clock mass, and ushers are taking up the second collection after communion. He surveys the church and watches as his parishioners drop money into the baskets. What is he thinking? How that money can best serve the poor? How that money will help with the parish maintenance? Is he thinking about his rare coin collection and how to enhance it? Perhaps he’s thinking about that forty-two inch plasma in his pricy condominium? How about all of the above?

In many ways a parish is a corporation, but in many ways it’s not. The head of the parish is a priest, a pastor, a man of the cloth. Not an accountant; not a CEO. Like most corporations, money pours into the operation and certain services are provided. And the individuals in positions of power (we pray they’re at least half-way honest) control that money and where it goes. And like a corporation, the pastor must accurately account, to his bishop and parishioners, for the money coming in and going out. As a Catholic, I’m highly offended by what these two crooks did. After all, this is just what the Catholic Church in America needs after the recent sex scandals involving a small number of abusive priests. I’m also offended by the reasons given by Skehan as to why he illegally and immorally diverted parish funds. First, he saw himself as the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation. Next, he felt that, as the CEO, he was inadequately compensated for his work. Finally, he viewed the diocese as frugal and parsimonious—refusing to fund his further studies and this is why he needed to dip into parish funds.

I suppose the bishop in Palm Beach should have given Skehan stock options, a $2.5 million bonus and the company car. Did these delusional beliefs give this fraud-in-a-Roman collar permission to grab money hand-over-fist? Apparently. This is Cognitive Dissonance in all its glory. I’ve been to many ordinations but I’ve never witnessed an ordaining bishop exhort the ordinundi to fleece their flock and squirrel away funds earmarked for the poor and needy—all the while making up a litany of lame excuses as to why. I spent some time in the seminary in the 1980’s. Trust me on this one: From the moment a man begins to seriously discern a possible vocation to the priesthood, he senses himself becoming more and more detached from the material world. Then once he gets to the seminary itself, he understands, from the get-go, (as in day one of student orientation) the ramifications of what will be required with this vocation. This man understands that, as a priest, he will forego many of the riches and material enticements of his fellow man—the BMW, the condo in Aspen, the 50-foot yacht, the weekly jaunts to the most expensive restaurants in town and the hefty bank accounts. Instead, this man should begin to focus on his growing spirituality and the spiritual well-being of others around him. And this awareness should intensify as the man draws closer to the day of his ordination. Who, during their priestly formation, taught these goofs to play grab-ass with as many twenty and fifty dollar bills as possible? I must have missed that lecture while I was in seminary. Do you mean to tell me that Skehan arrived at St. Vincent Ferrer parish only to find out (to his horror and astonishment) that he was now required to lead a simple and humble life?

By the way, kudos to the countless number of priests who practice integrity day in and day out. I have three good friends who are pastors and they get on me, from time to time, about my frustrations with our Church. I see their point. They don’t want to hear me lambaste their vocation any more than I want to hear them say that all school administrators (of which I am one) are corrupt. The Church is massive, and the crooks only make up a miniscule portion of the Catholic presbyterate. We should focus more on all the good that goes on in The Church. We can’t nullify the importance of the priesthood because of a few bad seeds. If that were the case, we might as well do the same with any other profession or vocation.

For, as the Ancient Greeks used to say, Where there is a sea, there are pirates.

Yes, indeed. And cancers as well.

6. The Cancer of Justifications and Academic Integrity

About twenty years ago, I ran into a former student of mine who’d come back to visit the campus while on spring break from the University of Florida. When I inquired about her grades, the young lady groaned that she was struggling to maintain a 2.6 GPA. This is a story we educators have heard many times before, especially since honors and advanced-placement courses tend to inflate high school grade-point averages. While 4.8 and 5.0 GPA’s are impressive, they’re also unrealistic. Personally, I find them silly.

I kidded with her, “Do you think you might need to study a little more? Cut down on the parties?”

“Nah, it’s not that. I just wasn’t prepared for the rigors of college. What can I say?”

I smiled politely, and then I remembered something. This young lady had quite the reputation for being less-than-honest back in the day; there were a few times I suspected her of cheating in my own class, but could never catch her in the act. She wasn’t an evil kid just someone who, like so many of her peers across this country, had mastered the system by sliding by on cute and clever instead of by honesty and hard work. Then she reached the big leagues and found her academic life breaking apart like a flimsy sand castle in the pounding surf.

Cancer: Pay the Price Now or Suffer the Consequences Later

We could argue that academic misconduct is a bit like juicing up on steroids. The performance may be flashy, even eye-catching at times, but it’s ultimately artificial. After a while, the juiceheads start to come apart at the seams. And so it goes with academics. Anyone can juice up a GPA with cheating and then brag about their impressive average, but they’ll eventually hit a wall. In the world of sports, particularly with the sport of football, these examples abound. NFL star Lyle Alzado had a celebrated career at defensive end but paid the ultimate price after cancer tore its way through his brain, reducing the once menacing hulk to a humble pile of skin and bones. Only at the end did Alzado lament his stupidity for taking the easy, undisciplined road. Just prior to his death, he pleaded with the youth of America to build their bodies the natural way, the right way.

The Slippery Slope Engenders the Cancer of Justifications

My first experience at snow skiing came at the Heavenly Resort out in Tahoe. I learned pretty quickly that if I didn’t wedge my skis, I would pick up momentum at an alarming rate and find myself racing across California’s powder at a dangerous speed. According to the skiing horror stories I’ve heard, this is how people end up colliding with evergreens, and plowing through lines of people waiting to ride the lifts. A slippery slope involves much the same concept. The mind starts on this downhill race, refuses to wedge, and winds up in a perilous predicament. The process goes something like this: It’s ten at night and my daughter should have been home by now. My god, she’s been in an accident. She’s lying upside down in a ditch. Nobody sees her. She’s alone. She’s dead! Your daughter walks through the door two minutes later unscathed.

Students fall into the slippery slope/justification predicament all the time.

It’s very competitive out there, and I need to keep up. If I cheat just a little, I’ll make better grades. Better grades will result in a higher GPA. A higher GPA means I can get into a top college. If I attend a primo school, I’ll get a better job and the better the job, the higher the salary. And so on and so forth. In other words, the object of the game is to win, not necessarily do the right thing. This new and rising social group has been referred to as The Winning Class.

Cheating, Like Cancer, Makes a Home

Monetary reasons aside, do students have a moral problem with cheating? Not enough, according to David Callahan, the author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. He writes, “Something strange is going on here. Americans seem to be using two moral compasses. One directs our behavior when it comes to things like sex, family, drugs, and traditional forms of crime. A second provides us ethical guidance in the realm of career, money, and success.”⁶ In other words, some folks out there consider themselves to be fine, upstanding citizens. They’d never dream of committing burglary, assault, arson, rape or murder. Would they, however, consider a little insurance fraud? How about over-inflating charitable contributions for tax purposes? Maybe they’d be tempted to purchase a term paper or whip up a lie that could help save them thousands in child support. Well… At least they’re not really hurting anybody, right? I can still remember the bumper sticker that read, WHEN CLINTON LIED, NO ONE DIED—left-over campaign jargon from the ’04 election and an obvious reference to George W. Bush and America’s involvement in Iraq. I had to keep reminding myself that this is what we get during election years, and we’ll be seeing more of this Leave me alone because there’s always someone out there who has done worse than I nonsense. Using this wayward logic, we’d all be off the hook in light of what Hitler did in the 1930s and 1940s.

Just Do What it Takes

Callahan traces America’s get-ahead-at-all-cost mentality back to the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s, culminating with the greed and excesses of the 80s and 90s. With the dawn of deregulation, he says, government agencies were stripped of much of their oversight power. Cheaters moved in where the checks and balances faded, and a new class of Americans emerged: the winning class.⁷ Regardless of the reasons, I see more cerebral hijackings with high school students that end up in moral Siberia— all in the name of grades, GPA’s, and increased social stature. Charles Gibson, of ABC News, interviewed several college students on the network’s 2004 special on cheating. When he asked the group why they went to college not one of them said, “To get an education.”

The Winning Class. Just keep your eye on the prize. Everything else is merely conversation.

If I may, I’d like to propose a new slippery slope to students: If I work hard and study, I’ll make higher grades. Higher grades will get me into a better school. That work ethic will serve me well in college, and I’ll make higher marks there, too. Higher marks will look better to prospective employers when I finish my undergrad or post grad work. When my employer sees my work ethic, he/she will be impressed, and I’ll advance in my career, thus attaining the satisfaction of a job well done. I’ll be able to pass these valuable lessons along to my own children when they are old enough to understand the meaning of honest work. And, yes, I might just make more money while I’m at it.

Perhaps more of us should read Daniel Goleman’s ground-breaking work, Emotional Intelligence. In a longitudinal study of valedictorians and salutatorians, most had attained only moderate success several years after graduating high school.⁸ Furthermore, the SAT, he says, has proven to be a rather poor predictor of future success, along with grade point averages. And by “success” Goleman is not necessarily talking about college. Let’s look beyond college, and carefully consider what really matters to employers: honesty, a good work ethic, ability to get along with peers, ability to take criticism well, being a team player, having a can-do attitude, punctuality, living a drug-free life and many more.

Honor in Our Schools: Chemo at Work

One of the greatest achievements at our high school in the past dozen or so years—even beyond all of our state titles in athletics—has been the formation of our honor council. Eleven students, two faculty members and I sit on the council. We only hear cases involving lying, cheating and stealing. We don’t hear many cases, but I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have any. In my twelve years serving the honor council, I’d say that 99% of the students who come before us admit to what they’ve done upfront. I’ve often joked that our council can draw the truth from a student quicker than sodium pentothal, and I don’t believe that’s an exaggeration. For the most part, our cases involve instances of academic dishonesty, and we hear the same justifications in case after case: I had too much homework last night. Teachers expect too much of students. I don’t even like this class. I had four tests today and could only study for three. Everyone in the class cheats. (Aside from hyperbole, this is the bandwagon fallacy in all its glory.) I’m under a lot of pressure to get into a good school. I forgot to study for this test so I made a cheat sheet. Our honor council members cringe when they hear these excuses.

High Achievers

A well-publicized survey discovered that 80% of the students listed in Who’s Who Among American High School Students have cheated.⁸ Kate Kessler, in her essay Helping High School Students Understand Academic Integrity, calls it “academic misconduct.” I think that’s a very appropriate term and one I wish more schools would use.

The pressure to stay on top is as real as the pressure to avoid the sewer. Ivy League-bound students cheat just the same as those who are headed for other schools, and many of us in education find that disturbing. Again, let’s listen to the undercurrents from those on top: Of course I cheat. Do you have any idea how much pressure we’re under to get to the top and stay there? I can’t mess up on one test or I’m dead meat. There are plenty of other students chomping at my heels. I do poorly on a test and I might ruin my class ranking. I CAN’T lose my class ranking.

Deal-Making Feeds Justifications

After the bell rang ending 4^th period one day, a girl edged up to the front of the room and informed me that she had to make a 3.0 or her parents would not take her car shopping. I smiled, gathered up my belongings, and told her I thought she was more-than-capable of achieving a 3.0 if she put her mind to it. “You don’t understand,” she said, “I need an ‘A’ in this class.” I paused, and then told her, rather firmly, not to concern me with any private deals struck at her family dinner table. Talk about your motivation to cheat. What’s a plagiarized paper when you can be shopping for a Mustang by term’s end?

In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman socks it to American parents, while he praises Asians for the work ethic they instill in their children. If an Asian child comes home with a 70 on a math test, for example, the parents might ask the child how much time he/she spent studying. If the answer is thirty minutes, the parents inform the child he/she will now study one hour for all math tests. If the next grade is an 85, the parents up the ante to an hour-and-a-half.⁹ The lesson is a powerful one, and makes it clear that time and effort will solve most problems. Excuses, on the other hand, will solve nothing. We’ve all heard the expression If at first you don’t succeed… Unfortunately, American children too often follow the words of W.C. Fields: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no sense in being a damn fool about it.

Giving Our Kids Built-In Excuses

As American parents, some of us (and I do emphasize some) have a bit of soul-searching to do. We say things, to our kids like, “It’s okay, honey. I know you’re not very good at math. I know you struggle with English. I’ll call your teacher tomorrow morning and straighten things out.” On the other hand, according to Goleman, that same conversation involving an Asian parent might sound a whole lot different: “Get back in that room and study some more.” Consider the countless American parents who have said, “I’ll call the principal. In the meantime, Mommy will write your report for you.” What message is the parent sending the child?

Our honor council recently saw a young man accused of cheating on a Geometry test. He admitted to the deed, claiming he rarely understood anything in the class. “I didn’t know any of the answers, so I had to look at someone’s paper. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” he said. Little did he know the teacher had passed out two versions of the test, and he had all the correct answers to the wrong test. The kids on the council felt so bad for the boy they assigned him several hours of work in our school’s tutoring program. A few of them personally offered him help if he wanted it. His mother had a simple take on the situation that, unfortunately, did not even remotely address the honor issue. “I know he struggles with math,” she said. And that was that. If that isn’t a tacit excuse for academic misconduct, I don’t know what is.

Our parents are very supportive of our educational mission. They genuinely want their children to earn a top-notch education, and earn it the honest way. But I know there will always be some who see the school thing as a bottom line business: grades, class rank, teacher recommendations, college acceptance, and diploma—by any means. I often wonder what they’re thinking as they watch the commencement exercises, and the graduates parading across the stage. The parents whose sons and daughters earned the diploma the honest way, can be proud of a job well done. But what can the others, the members of TheWinning Class, pride themselves on? The bottom line, apparently. Talk about the pressure to cheat. Talk about your need to have a little chat with Leon Festinger.